Schedule for Monday, August 17

Revanche

Austria's entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Revanche has brought home awards from film festivals the world over. Critics and audiences alike have been dazzled by this meticulously directed thriller about an indentured Ukrainian prostitute, the man who wants to free her, and a rural cop and his wife. A tense and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

Adam

"Subtlety and nuance mark both the film's dialogue and performances. It's hard to see how Dancy and Byrne could be any better." (LA Times)

After moving into her new apartment, Beth, a broken-hearted teacher, finds herself drawn to Adam, her socially inept downstairs neighbor whose head seems lost in the stars. When he reveals that he has Asperger’s Syndrome, her parents (Peter Gallagher and Amy Irving) are understandably concerned, but she can’t deny their unique connection. Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy deliver knockout performances, and Writer/Director Max Mayer examines the challenges of an exceptional modern relationship with a humorous and heartfelt touch.

In the Loop

The US President and the UK Prime Minister fancy a war. But not everyone agrees that war would be a good thing. When one British official makes a passing comment to a reporter that "war is unforeseeable," it becomes a major news story that accelerates a run-up to war in the Middle East. A laugh-out-loud political satire on the diplomatic misunderstandings and behind-the-scenes power plays between the British and US governments preceding the Iraq war. The Village Voice calls it "a flying circus of backstage political damage control and deal-making."

Pepe le Moko

Jean Gabin, dangerously cool against the overheated backdrop of Algiers’ mysterious Casbah, plays a charismatic crook from Marseilles eluding the police and making time with the lovely Mireille Balin. Gabin turned heads as one of the first movie stars willing to portray a sensible crook whose moral code just happens to put him at odds with society. His fatalistic Pépé, one of noir’s first antiheroes, inspired tough-guy actors from Humphrey Bogart to Alain Delon to portray the weathered, sympathetic, and inevitably doomed criminals of ’40s and ’50s noir.